MAP PAINTING/COLLAGES
1996-2002

Mills has long shown a sly gift for puns, double entendres, and other verbal games, and his work of the last six years is riddled with such word games.  Much of this stems from language already present in the charts and maps he uses.  “European Commerce” says the chart, and Mills has altered the title at top to read "I Get Mine, See?" but titles the work "I Get Yours", which is, of course, the point in imperialism.  If the viewer looks closely at the dress-patterns that have been added, additional words enter the fray: "yoke," "collar," "belt," "cuff," suddenly cease to be the parts of a shirt, and become a strategy for world domination and political aggression.

For all its wit and humor, these genuinely naughty works evoke the darker side of culture, when unquestioned assumptions of racial or economic superiority are evoked under the guise of objective education. But no map is truly objective: each is merely a projection, one person’s attempt to visualize the unseeable, one child’s attempt to draw in the lines that will govern a life.

—Jeff Abell, from the essay, "Please Cross Out the Correct Response," Dan Mills: Detector exhibition brochure, Northern Illinois University Art Museum, Chicago Gallery, 2002